Dive Brief:
- More than half of consumers — 56% — say their interactions with businesses are more difficult today than they were a decade ago, according to a February survey of 4,000 consumers in North America and the U.K. conducted by Pegasystems, The Enterprise Transformation Company and YouGov.
- Consumers’ top complaint was long wait times, followed by having to repeat the same information to different customer service agents multiple times and representatives lacking the necessary information.
- More than three-quarters say organizations should invest in improving how they interact with consumers, but more than two-thirds say companies’ tech investments are more often about profit than customer experience improvements.
Dive Insight:
Despite investments in technology, customers say their interactions with companies are worsening.
Businesses are under pressure to prove value and cut costs. But technology investments shouldn’t come at the expense of the customer, according Maxie Schmidt, VP and principal analyst at Forrester.
“As a customer experience person, you have to then find the cost savings that are in line with customer needs versus the cost savings that you just do,” Schmidt told CX Dive in January.
Consumers regularly complain about long hold times to speak to a representative. It was the top complaint cited by respondents in a Vonage survey released in February, and a leading reason consumers hesitate to reach out to customer service, according to a November Zingly.ai and Dynata survey.
Many companies simply try to avoid taking phone calls altogether as they can be expensive. Instead, they try to direct customers to self-service options.
HP, for example, set a minimum 15-minute wait time to speak to a customer service representative in an effort to nudge U.K. and some European customers to digital service options, the Register reported last month.
Cutting costs without thinking of the impact on the customer can add up for a business in the long run. Nearly 2 in 5 customers said they change which company they frequent after a poor customer experience, according to the survey.
